With a rocky start to de Randamie's title reign, where does women's featherweight go from here?

No matter what we say about the inaugural UFC women’s featherweight title fight at UFC 208 on Saturday night, we’ll at least have to admit that it was memorable.

For that, we mostly have newly crowned champion Germaine de Randamie to thank. She’s the one who gave us the most significant action in her clash with Holly Holm, at times bending the rules to get there, then began her title reign with a victory speech that sounded thoroughly unenthusiastic about facing the only logical contender for the UFC’s newest title.

In short, it was a great way to get off to a bad start as UFC champ, though at least it gave us a reason to notice her. And when you’re trying to gain traction as the queen of a new division, maybe it’s not so bad to start off by giving fans a clear way to feel about you – even if a lot of them end up feeling like they hate you.

But, OK, maybe hate is too strong a word. I mean, you could hear at least one person’s profane outburst (the one that rhymes with “buck too!”) during her post-fight interview, but then again this fight went down at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where it’s a good bet that a live mic will catch that particular phrase floating through the air at any time of day.

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And yes, de Randamie (8-3 MMA, 4-1 UFC) did make herself a bit of a villain by punching after the horn in back-to-back rounds, the first example of which proved to be one of the most damaging blows of the fight. That’s not the kind of thing that tends to endear you to the public, even if the bulk of the blame probably belongs to the referee who thought the same foul twice constituted no more than a stern warning.

Then there’s the decision itself, which went de Randamie’s way but not by much. She stung Holm (10-3 MMA, 3-3 UFC) often in the early going. She found herself mired in the clinch late, reduced to making frustrated faces instead of mounting meaningful offense. She did just enough, though not much more, and the effect in the end was to create a champion who seemed to have squeaked by for a historic title win.

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It’s funny how the mere mention of the name “Cyborg” can make fighters remember all the other obligations they have to attend to first. For de Randamie, it was enough to make her recall that hand surgery she desperately needs as a result of a 2015 bout with Larissa Pacheco. Even Holm, before this bout, brushed off the “Cyborg” talk by saying that there was “a lot that needs to happen” before she could consider it.

Anybody else getting the sense that, while these women are all proud warriors who would take the Justino fight if they had to, no one’s all that eager for the opportunity?

But it’s true that, whatever Justino does next, she’ll have to get past some regulatory hurdles first. Her eligibility status remains unsettled after that “potential anti-doping policy violation” in December, though with de Randamie eyeing surgery it might give her just enough time to resolve her issues in time to challenge for the belt.

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If not, then things really get tricky at women’s featherweight. There just aren’t many contenders to choose from at the moment, in part because there isn’t really a division in the UFC outside of this one fight.

Give it time, and that will necessarily change. Maybe time will also change our minds about de Randamie. If it’s legitimacy as a champ she’s after, she’ll probably have to go through “Cyborg” to get there. But no one says she has to be excited about it.